Along with the recent advancements in telecommunications has come a corresponding complexity exhibited by modern telephone systems and the digital telephones associated with such systems. Many digital feature telephones (DFTs) are no longer limited in their operations to merely receive and transmit telephone messages. Rather, many DFTs contain both logic and memory circuits that allow the DFTs to perform preprogrammed functions. For example, many DFTs are capable of storing commonly dialed telephone numbers within a memory, whereby a telephone number held in memory can be recalled from the memory and forwarded to a telephone switching exchange by a single key depression.
Aside from DFTs containing dedicated logic circuitry within their construction, the prior art is replete with telephone systems wherein a host computer or computer control is coupled to a telephone subset. In the early prior art, telephones and computers worked independently. However, in an attempt to improve both productivity and efficiency, application programming interfaces (API) have been developed that permit the direct intercoupling and intercommunication of telephones and computers. In prior art APIs, although the computer and telephone directly communicate, the computer was not allotted full control over the operation of the telephone. Rather, many prior art API's merely provided a means for a host computer to assist in the operation of the telephone by performing such functions as dialing, answering calls, or keeping track of the status of the telephone. In such prior art APIs, since the host computer was not provided with full control over the operations of the telephone, the computer could not prevent a wrongful or inadvertent key entry from being processed. As a consequence, prior art APIs merely permitted a host computer to react to the changing status of the telephone. As such, if the wrongful key entry altered the status of the telephone the host computer would react to the wrongful key entry. By reacting to a wrongful key entry, the program application being run by the host computer could be disrupted, aborted or otherwise misdirected.
Wrongful key events may be inadvertently entered into a telephone system when a novice user is first trained in how to properly utilize the system. In many telephone systems, it is not uncommon for telephones to have specialized keys that perform various desirable functions such as the storage and retrieval of commonly used numbers from memory, the transfer of a phone call from one telephone to another, the interconnecting of telephones for conference calls, placing a caller on hold, and so on. In fact, many telephone systems now utilize DFTs that are so complex in their function, that the purpose of the keys on the telephone keypad are no longer self evident. Consequently, instructions and/or training is required to learn how to properly utilize all the features available within the telephone system.
Most telephone systems and telephones are furnished with a manual of operating instructions. In many prior art systems, it was only by reading and memorizing the operating instructions that a person become proficient in the proper use of the telephone system. The problem with most operating manuals is that operating manuals are not dynamic, but rather only contain text and occasionally illustrations. As such, the user's only opportunity to actually try and operate the functions of a telephone system is to press the various function keys of a telephone in accordance with the instructions of the operating manual and thereby dynamically learn the features of the telephone system by trial and error. The obvious disadvantages of dynamically learning the features of a telephone system by trial and error, are that errors will inevitably occur. When applied to an actual operating telephone system, such errors may not be isolated to the features of the telephone subset but may be forwarded to the telephone switching exchange where they burden the switching exchange.
In view of the above, there exists a need for a telephone control interface system wherein a computer is given full control over the key events entered on a telephone within a given telephone system to prevent wrongful key events from being directed to the telephone switching system or disrupting a running computer application.
It is, therefore, a primary objective of the present invention to provide a telephone control interface system that interconnects a computer control to both the telephone and the telephone switching exchange of a telephone system, wherein the present invention control interface system provides the computer control with complete control over the keypad functions of the telephone.